Monotonous Forest

An hour of Messiaen

Wednesday night at the Baryshnikov Arts Center (the Movado Hour series), pianists Marilyn Nonken and Sarah Rothenberg will play Messiaen's Visions de l'Amen.  Written in 1943, it was first performed by the composer and his student (and future wife) Yvonne Loriod in a semi-secret art gallery concert in Nazi-occupied Paris.  At the premiere, notables on the premises included Christian Dior and Francis Poulenc.

Tickets are free, but must be reserved, and note that the recital begins at 7:00.

[Photo: Christian Dior in his studio in 1947, by Frank Scherschel, via the LIFE photo archive]

"Acrid dreaminess" in today's humorous coincidence

Last Thursday at London's Wigmore Hall, the new music group Radius gave the world premiere of Monotonous Forest, a new trio by Paul Newland for cello, piano and percussion.  Stephen Graham's review on MusicalCriticism.com is here, and Tim Rutherford-Johnson (of The Rambler) has comments on Musical Pointers.

(I have never met Dr. Newland, but thank him for his inadvertent homage.)

Ten years, half-parenthetical

Monday night's tenth anniversary concert by counter)induction at Merkin Concert Hall was a good reminder of the wealth of impressive young players committed to contemporary music, as well as the breadth of composers writing for them.  In Sciarrino's Centauro Marino (1984), the violin, viola, cello and clarinet play tiny hushed fragments, periodically blown apart by hammering chords on the piano.  Douglas Boyce, one of the group's co-founders, offered his engaging Deixo / Sonata for viola and piano, and his colleague Kyle Bartlett offered a transfixing, wrenching Adagio sostenuto.

I loved the intricacies of Carl Schimmel's The Pismirist's Congeries (2006), one of the group's recent composition prizewinners.  Schimmel defines "pismirist" as a "person who collects small or insignificant things," and the result was the aural equivalent of one of Joseph Cornell's boxes.  My listening companion was struck by Ryan Streber's Partita for solo cello, brilliantly played by Sumire Kudo.  Lee Hyla's gently nostalgic Ciao, Manhattan (1990) and Eric Moe's energetic Dead Cat Bounce closed the program.  The rest of the musicians, all superb, included Sharon Roffman (violin), Jessica Meyer (viola), Benjamin Fingland (clarinet), Steven Beck (piano) and Alex Sopp (flute).

[Photo: "Homage to the Romantic Ballet" (1942) by Joseph Cornell, via www.josephcornellbox.com]

A pause for Iran

June 1 marked the first anniversary of Alan Taylor's photo blog, The Big Picture, published three times a week by the Boston Globe.  Inspired by the oversized graphics of Life Magazine as well as other print and online sources dedicated to photographic excellence, Taylor has reaffirmed the power and immediacy of visual images in storytelling.  I discovered the series in January, thanks to some stunning documentation of Obama's inauguration.

Yesterday some equally compelling photos arrived in the wake of the election in Iran.  (Thanks to Steve Smith for the tip.)

Hilary & Valentina

It's been about five years since I've heard violinist Hilary Hahn live, so when a friend offered what turned out to be a prime seat for her recital at Town Hall's Free for All, I couldn't say no.  Working with the terrific pianist Valentina Lisitsa, Hahn cruised effortlessly through three of Charles Ives's Sonatas for Violin and Piano (4, 2 and 1, played in that order), a parcel of Brahms's Hungarian Dances, plus Bartók's Romanian Folk Dances, all done with disarming, easygoing virtuosity. 

But while I came for Ives, I was seduced by Ysaÿe: two sonatas for solo violin (Op. 27, nos. 4 and 6), and Rêve d'enfant, for violin and piano.  And who could have guessed that the encore, Paganini's Cantabile, would be so stirring?  In Hahn's hands, works that can lean toward shallow showmanship somehow spoke more eloquently.  As an artist she has grown quickly, but her technical proficiency comes bundled with feeling and wisdom beyond her 29 years—an amazing afternoon.

[Illustration: Hilary Hahn by Emma, age 8, Romerberg, Germany, from www.hilaryhahn.com]

Band of 40

On Wednesday at Miller Theatre, the Orchestra of the League of Composers will make its debut in a program of Britten, Carter, Stravinsky and Julia Wolfe, with world premieres by Christopher Dietz, Alvin Singleton and Charles Wuorinen.  John Schaefer of WNYC will host the evening.  The 40-member ensemble, led by conductor Louis Karchin, is a veritable New York phone book of musicians committed to contemporary music.

David Gordon, the League's President (who also founded the Look & Listen Festival), laid the groundwork and helped secure funding for this ambitious new group.  Lara Pellegrinelli has more details in The New York Times, here.

[Photo: sculpture by Tony Oursler at Metro Pictures, 2001]

That cactus again

Earth Day should be a year-round thing, and some musicians are doing their part to make environmental issues more hip.  Cellist Madeleine Shapiro has combined her love of contemporary music with her passion for the outdoors, resulting in an ongoing effort she calls the Nature Project.  Recently on New Music Box, she described working with composers Judith Shatin (For the Birds), Morton Subotnick (Axolotl), Matthew Burtner (Fragments from Cold) and Paul Rudy, with excerpts from all four in a video accompanying the article.  

It's worth the entire video just to see Shapiro in yellow gloves plucking an amplified cactus for Rudy's Degrees of Separation: "Grandchild of Tree" (1999), which I had the great pleasure of hearing in 2006.

X (not Malcolm)

In conjunction with three concerts of music by Iannis Xenakis, the International Contemporary Ensemble has created a blog dedicated to impressions of the composer and his music.  I was flattered to be asked to contribute, here, and they added a link to the Arditti String Quartet in a riveting reading of Tetras (1983) from the 2008 Venice Biennale.

[Photo: painted metal letter from Suffolk Scrap Store Online]